The Jefferson County Sportsmen's Club

My son Justin took these pictures while we were shooting black powder at the Jefferson County Sportsmen's Club. It's a picturesque place...

Remington and Flinter

My son Justin, his friend Trey, and I went to the range today to try out Trey's new Remington revolver. It's a black powder pistol of 44 caliber. While he was loading it, Justin and I were trading off on his flintlock pistol.

We decided it was high time to get the pistol properly sighted in so we benched the flinter and started filing the front site. The pistol is shooting about 12" low at 25 yards. Justin took the following frame captures from a movie he shot.






Here's a sequence showing Trey firing the Remington. Note the primer 's blast.

















The Remington was pretty accurate out of the box. I hit 3 'bottles' in 3 shots at 25 yards. Apparently, I'm delighted ;-)



Going to the club was a spur-of-the-moment decision. What a nice way to finish up the afternoon!

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Edit - We have been duly chastised for our lack of safety glasses.

A day at the range

Justin and I went to a gun range today to shoot his new flintlock pistol. Our hosts, the Wilderness Rangers of Kentucky, are blackpower enthusiasts, a dozen of the most generous and friendly people you could hope to meet. Most were dressed in period garb. A few looked like they stepped out of the 1700s.

Even though they didn't know us, they took the time to show us how to properly load and fire Justin's pistol. They also let us shoot their rifles quite a lot.

I always thought shooting a flintlock rifle would involve a heavy trigger pull, a delay while the powder in the pan burned, and then a wooosh! as the ball left the barrel, visibly traveling downrange.

Wrong. The trigger pull tended to be feather light and instantly followed by a crisp crack. Recoil was light, in part because of the rifles are heavy.

We happened to attend their Thanksgiving meet. So after a turkey shoot, which is a multi-round shooting contest, they had a spread of food. There was homemade chili, hot dogs, corned beef, turkey, soft drinks... and no vegetables :-D Of course they tried to feed us until we popped.

ooo someone made coffee over a fire, it was great coffee. I used my period-accurate Starbucks insulated coffee mug.

A good time was had by all!




Justin takes a shot.




Tony misfires, then takes his shot.